Tom Brennan - PETE ALONSO: METS' LEAST VALUABLE PLAYER

Once the brilliant (and very productive) Jake deGrom got snuffed again despite a brilliant 14 Ks in 7 innings, bringing his 2018-20 W-L record to an absurdly undeserving 26-20, the 2020 Mets season was OVER.  

Mathematically, as of Tuesday morning as I write this, maybe not yet.

But who are we kidding?

Baseball, like the rest of life these days, has lots of awards.

Most Valuable This, Cy That, Golden The Other Thing...

We love awards.  We love positive stuff.

But sometimes, we go too easy on the failures.  

So I say let's start a new tradition:

We should have a Mets Least Valuable Player each year.  

Yes, in Scarlet Red Letters, said Hester Prynne.

We can be generous and single out two such awardees:

Steve Matz gets one.  He is a puzzle wrapped in an enigma.  Since starting his career winning 11 of 12, the rest of his career (20-40) can be largely summed up in two words:  

BEWILDERING FAILURE.  

Awful this year, 0-5, 9.79, -0.9 WAR, he gets it for pitchers: 

The (not) coveted pitchers' LVP.  

No trophies.  Nothing to show off on a shelf at home.

Pete Alonso gets it for the hitters, Wednesday’s out-of-a-coma night notwithstanding, and really gets the award for the whole team.

The man who got, and deservedly got, endless accolades in 2019, is IMO the Mets' Least Valuable Player of 2020.

Let me break it down for you.

Some may say that his total homers and RBIs aren't that terrible this year, even though well off 2019's pace.

But let's go deeper.

Break it down by 3 categories: hitless games, 1 hit games, multiple hit games.

HITLESS GAMES: 

An astonishing 26 of his 52 games have been hitless!  In those games, he is 0 for 88 with 9 walks and 2 RBIs.  TWO!!  Not only hitless - completely unproductive.

ONE HIT GAMES:

Moving on to 1 hit games. 18 of those, in which he had 6 homers.  In those 6 games, he had 11 RBIs.  In the other 12, he had 4 RBIs.

MULTIPLE HIT GAMES:

In just 8 of his 52 games, Pete has had multiple hits.

When it rains it pours, as in those 8 games he went 22 for 32!

So in 44 games in which he had zero hits or one hit, comprising 87% of his season, he has hit a subterranean .116, and in 38 of those games, comprising 75% of his games, he had compiled just 4 RBIs.

I did not try to figure out how many games in which he went hitless they lost, such as the one run loss last night.  I imagine that number is not pretty.

Fielding has regressed, too, when he does play 1B.

We've heard about institutions that are too big to fail.  In the early 1990s, Chase and Citibank were floundering, but everyone knew they were too big to fail.  Well, in a similar vein, some players are too big to fail.  

One Mets player in 2020 has a WAR of 0.7 in limited play this year, and another player? -0.7.  Positive WAR is good, negative WAR is bad.

The one with the positive 0.7, Luis Guillorme, was sent down because  he is not deemed too big to fail.  Pete, the guy with the -0.7 WAR, before Wednesday’s game, is too big to fail, so he stays.

Pete's biggest problem? I'm spitballin' here, and figured it was this:

No ABs against Steve Matz, is how I see it.  The cure all.

So, enough snarkiness.  Let me move towards a conclusion:

I submit to you, ladies and gentlemen:

The Mets Least Valuable Player so far for 2020, Pete Alonso.

I submit it, though, with one fervent hope: 

He gets his @%&# together over the last few games, starting with his Wednesday nite thaw, then gets back to being Pete this off season and becomes the 2021 Mets MVP, again, like he was in 2019.

Or he can perhaps change his adage to LFGTB, or LFGSF, or something else befitting of another locale.